Straddling a gift under the tree is a giant tinker-toy contraption.  At the top of the contraption sits the label “To Eric, From The Mad Wrapper”.  You can turn the crank to make the label spin.

My tinker toy windmill (or sign) was not a puzzle, riddle, calculator, or illusion.  Those items would arrive on future Decembers.  My windmill was simply a gift tag holder.  A strange, complex, simple-to-build tag holder but nothing more than that.

These were certainly the early days of The Mad Wrapper.  Although the evolution had been steadily progressing in it’s infancy for years, one could say that this gadget marked  the first of the new era.